Monthly Archives: November 2012

On the tarmac at Kyiv's Borispil Airport, during a sun-drenched afternoon last July, 24-year-old Yana Zhdanova tensed up when she saw Kirill I, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, descending the stairs from his just-landed plane. "I was pumped up with pure adrenalin," she said, clenching her delicate fists before me as we sat in Femen's office in downtown Kyiv. A former journalist with a university degree and a current strip-club dancer, Zhdanova had received accreditation from the Ukrainian church authorities managing Kirill's visit and so stood with members of the press >>>

Why the group that inspired Pussy Riot's infamous "punk prayer" could be tough to stop.Femen activists during a rally in Kyiv (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)
KYIV, Ukraine -- On the tarmac at Kyiv's Borispil Airport, during a sun-drenched afternoon last July, 24-year-old Yana Zhdanova tensed up when she saw Kirill I, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, descending the stairs from his just-landed plane. "I was pumped up with pure adrenalin," she said, clenching her delicate fists as we sat in Femen's office in downtown Kyiv. A former journalist with a university degree and a current >>>

When the activist group Femen burst onto the Ukrainian protest scene in 2008, holding mud-wrestling matches on Kyiv's central Independence Square to protest the country’s notoriously dirty politics, I was hopeful the stunts could succeed in kick-starting a serious discussion about sexism and gender inequality, problems that continue to plague the nations of the former Soviet Union.
Four years and a new office in Paris later, the group, which professes to use “sextremism” to fight against patriarchy as manifested by dictatorship, the church, and the sex industry, more closely resembles >>>